On Sat, Nov 28, 2009 at 10:04 AM, Jon Delfin <[email protected]> wrote: > Why do I feel that you're putting a lot more thought into this than anyone at > NBC is?
That is funny. Part of that is just a certain fetishist tendency in my personality - but it also suggests an old saying in my profession - when the therapist cares more about the patient getting better than the patient does himself, something is wrong. Similarly, when a TV viewer cares more about the success of a tv program than the network that shows it, something is probably wrong too (not to mention that I have not actually been a viewer of The Jay Leno Show for about 8 weeks now). But your observation suggests something else too - something that has been growing on me the last couple of months. Rather than the Jay Leno Show being a high stakes gamble by a major television company to try to fundamentally change the game, it may simply be a recognition that prime time network programming is just not that important any more. In that sense, the Jay Leno Show is the equivalent of George Costanza walking around in sweat pants. But that can't be quite right - even if the days of big networks making a lot of money from programming the 10:00 pm hour are numbered, the Leno experiment has multi million dollar implications for other high profit areas in NBC (and thus GE)'s portfolio: it so far has decreased profitability in the 9:00 hour, it has decreased profitability in late night, and it has decreased profitability in the late local news for NBC affiliates. From that stand point it is hard to imagine anything more important to NBC than fixing this Leno problem, and yet it is hard to see much evidence that they are thinking deep thoughts about it. -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
